a blue review

Another review to amuse you as I get back into the swing of this blogging thing. Enjoy! I’ll be posting a handful more over the coming three or four weeks, and then we’ll see about some other stuff. 🙂

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The Ultimate Guide to Sexual Fantasy: How to Have Incredible Sex with Role Play, Sex Games, Erotic Massage, BDSM Play and Much, Much More by Violet Blue

I wasn’t sure what to expect from a guide to sexual fantasy. I sort of figured it would be about how to navigate the psychological depths of fantasy – learn how to describe the details of your fantasies, discern your motivations and turn-ons within them, decide how you feel about them, and figure out which ones you want to bring to life vs which ones are best kept in the realm of your own personal fictional world. Maybe sections on writing (diaries, memoir, erotic fiction and fanfic, for instance) or making art about your fantasies, or choosing erotica or porn films that might best tap into them, or dealing with negative feelings such as shame or guilt that may be attached to some fantasies. Maybe stuff about how best to find people or communities of people who share your fantasies, or tips on discussing them with your lover(s). Maybe some woo-woo visualization exercises.

But Blue’s latest book is more of a survey course in sex play outside the one-on-one missionary think-of-England sort. It might be more appropriately titled A Primer on Sexual Adventure. Fantasy plays a role here, for sure, but the book is more about ways to explore your sexual desires – which may or may not be the same thing as your fantasies, a distinction the book does not draw. When she does write about discussing fantasies with your lover, she sets it up as a thing that might be challenging, but spends just a few paragraphs on basic ways to work through those challenges before jumping right to “Ready to play now?” It’s a bit jarring. Hurrying to the action seems like an odd choice in a book that in theory would be focusing on the psychological.

Okay, so let’s talk about the action. Unfortunately, because it tries to cover so much ground, this book ends up being kinda… watered down. Each section is mostly made up of lists of things one can try – essentially, of popular (read: other people’s) things to do. The lists themselves are for the most part pretty clichéd. The concept of the “naughty schoolgirl,” for instance, comes up at least three or four times in different sections. I can’t help but wonder whether, in focusing outwardly, on the most well-known, and therefore necessarily a bit wilted, ideas about sexy play, this guide might in fact serve to restrict and discourage readers from having and exploring their own. A sort of “here is how to have fun” approach instead of a “how would you most like to have fun?” one. At worst it could even be shaming – if one’s own fantasies are so outside the pale as to be unmentionable in a guide to fantasy, does that mean they’re really truly evil?

As well, the book’s section on BDSM is almost indistinguishable from the one on role play, with amendments for a bit of very un-scary pain and what almost sounds like mandatory power play – in the bedroom only of course, and with plenty of “funishment,” except she just says “punishment” because of course this is all fantasy, not reality (sigh). Given how much literature is out there about BDSM these days, I’m surprised to see it given such a slap-and-tickle treatment here, with no mention that for some people this goes way beyond bedroom play, and no acknowledgement that Leather culture even exists. The chapter reads as though it were written by someone imagining what BDSM is like rather than knowing it from the inside. Which is fine if BDSM isn’t really your thing, but then perhaps it would be wise to call for reinforcements when writing about it.

Given all this, perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised that the scenarios are also almost exclusively geared toward heterosexual monogamous couples, with the possibility of bisexual exploration noted every once in a while. And the element of surprise is suggested uncomfortably often. (Pro tip: sex-related surprises are only a good idea if you’re already pretty darned sure your lover will totally adore what you have planned, *and* has already consented to being surprised. Outside that framework, you’re taking some pretty big risks.) All in all The Ultimate Guide reads a lot closer to a Cosmo-style grab bag of straight sex tips than I’d have expected from either Violet Blue or Cleis. At the very least, it would have been nice for them to explain in the subtitle or the back-cover blurb who the book is intended for – cuz it’s very much not Cleis’s usual readership of porn-loving queers.

Speaking of which, for a book ostensibly about fantasy, it bizarrely skips any real discussion of people’s most common sources of fantasy material – regular old books, TV and films, and their pornographic cousins. I would have really liked to read a guide that would accompany people through that!

Anyway. If you’re straight, very new to sexual exploration outside the box, pretty sorted-out around whatever shame or other baggage you might have, and in search of a basic tour of what’s out there in sexyland, check out this guide as a starting point. If that’s not you, here’s what I’d advise instead: If any of the topics in the guide really appeal to you – threesomes, BDSM play, erotic massage, whatever – go find a book devoted entirely to that topic, possibly from Blue’s extensive resource guide at the back. You’ll doubtless come out with a more satisfying level of detail. Do check out other works by Violet Blue – I gave her Adventurous Couple’s Guide to Sex Toys a solid review last year, for instance. She really shines when she’s talking about how tech and sex intersect, and it’s high time we saw an extensive book about just that from her. Don’t take The Ultimate Guide to Sexual Fantasy as a prime example of the work she’s capable of. Sadly it’s just not.